Autumn Rust TSM
by Negative-Z
Summary: My last Lemonade Break catches the fall, ages to ages, rust to rust.


The Anime series "Shuffle" is brought to us by Funimation, not me. I do not profit financially from this.

[Title:] Deal! Fortune! The boy who could become either a god or a devil…in bed.

[Note:] I detest any story that begins with an apology, with some exception to late installments. The final chapters are late, but this is a naughty fanfiction and the bottom of any barrel is already the sorriest part. I'm sorry that I haven't written fanfiction for almost a decade. That is, I'm sorry I've kept track because I'll soon be at the age where ff is creepy rather than silly. I won't wonder if I feel creepy or silly doing this because I'm doing this to change.

[Side Note:] See website link on my profile.

---

Rin lived surrounded by royalty and modern Japan. The arcades sold cats and the school uniforms defied gravity. Well, no, that's not accurate. The arcades sold a chance to win a _toy_ cat, and the school uniforms _demanded_ gravity. "Royalty" is the right term, though, because Rin had the king of Gods and his daughter living next door on one side, the king of Devils and his daughter on the other. He also lived in a modern _suburb_ and, whenever things seemed like they couldn't be worse, he thanked heaven (and hell just in case) that he didn't live in a bustling, bouncing, bursting metropolis. The stories about nice guys thrown into city life make him turn red, sometimes white.

Devils and Gods had been immigrating into the human world for a little more than a generation now. They'd integrated so well, in fact, that the controversy of whether to refer to them as "Devils" or "Gods" or "people from the world of…" already seemed silly. Maybe people in Rin's world adapted better because they started public school only after they could read and write, leading many of them to already be legal adults by the time they reached high school. That was an old and entirely unimportant human issue, though.

The only otherworldly debate Rin had been pulled into was over ears. Some of his peers really liked the long ears the Gods had, others really really liked the really REALLY long Devil ears. Whenever pressed for what he favored in any girl, Rin liked to consider himself "not picky."

Asshole. Of course you're not picky, you've got a whole damn harem to pick from.

Rin would insist that only people who'd never had half a dozen girls vying for their love would call it a blessing. In all fairness to his upbringing, both of Rin's parents were killed in car cash when he was a little boy. No, not his genitals, just his parents, but still.

Which brings us to Kaede, a childhood friend and arguably the first lady in his life. The same crash that killed both his parents also killed her mother. In the aftermath, Kaede's father took Rin under his wing. Kaede's father isn't around much. He's a good man, a good provider, but he's probably the only guy in town with more masculinity issues than Rin. Let's give him a break and hope he's enjoying his business trip. After her own…adjustment period, Kaede also began taking care of little orphan Rin. Is she more like a maid, or a big sister? You might get more than two answers to that question.

Kaede has shoulder-length sunny orange hair and is as sweet as she is cute, which is to say her very existence has started a capital "Pee-yourself" Psychotic fan club. It might be more accurate to call them a gang when they try to prove their adoration by murdering Rin in broad daylight. These gangs aren't too quick, or too sharp, but Rin's school chums also do their part to make up for Kaede's coddling.

His right hand man, Itsuki, can seem more like his nemesis. As a wing man, let's call him an anti-Cupid. An arrogant womanizer determined to bring out the beast in Rin, Itsuki could only be worse if he were a model academic who looked good in glasses, and he is. He can even take a punch, but his nature vs. nurture debate will stay beside the point until he either makes a withdrawal from Rin's harem, or a deposit.

Mayumi makes for an interesting equal and opposite to Itsuki as the self-appointed energetic queen of gossip and tiny breasts. She doesn't have half of Itsuki's academic talent, but certainly has twice the sense of romantic justice. Everyone's seen her fan-service hair style, short with long sections on each side, but it looks oddly girl-next-door in grayish green. She doesn't blame her looks (Who wouldn't love a left blue and right magenta eye?) on being half-devil, but she does bemoan her inability to use magic.

Yes, people from the other worlds are genetically compatible with humans. Yes, they can use magic. We could talk about the magic and mingling, but that would make it difficult to talk about Rin's older friends in the next sentence, so let's just say that it gives them more than long ears.

Yes, Rin also attracts senior students. Lock up your daughters, mothers, and pets just to be safe.

Fuck you, Rin.

Asa is another childhood friend who isn't very good at hiding her attraction to Rin, even in plain sight. With spring green hair, cut in a one-sided variation of Mayumi's, she might be a gorgeous girl made cute by bold, almost tomboyish behavior, or a cute girl made gorgeous by the same. She'll knock you out, and Rin off his feet, one way or the other. If that sounds too complicated, just ogle her BFF Kareha, a bubbly, buxom blonde from the world of Gods. Her people are polygamous, as she's keen to remind us, so she'd probably chase Rin more seriously if she wasn't so optimistic, or if she took anything seriously…other than love.

Still sounds complicated? Let's brings things back home then.

Ma-ou seems a little too effete to rule the world of Devils, and Shin-ou a little too boorish to command the Gods.

"What about the queens?"

Do you want this to be more confusing?

Just know that these big daddies both love their princesses so much that they'll take up human world homes on either side of Rin. The heir apparent daughters to otherworldly powers both met Rin as children on separate occasions and fell in love. The heir apparent daughters are both so gorgeous that there are now three psychotic fan clubs out for Rin's blood.

The princess of the Gods, Sia, has a long proper name that sounds Greek and contagious, long burgundy hair, and a cheerful, active personality. Opposite her, shy and reflective, is Nerine. The princess of the Devils has really long bluish-purple hair and really, REALLY large…ears. Nerine's eccentric little cousin of sorts followed the lot of them into Rin's town, then into his home. This gives Kaede another person to take care of and Rin a Lolita complex to suppress alongside a harem instinct. Any well-balanced person could see Primula adding more fuel to the emotional fires, but forcing Primula back home wouldn't really be sane.

You want to disappoint her? You want to look Primula in that blankly innocent face, with those wild lavender-gray pig tales, and tell her no? Go ahead. I dare you.

Does it matter whether any or all of these young ladies is the perfect match for Rin? No. Does it matter that royalty from the other worlds seem to have noticeably more problems with magic overflow? That depends on who you ask. Was this whole scenario dreamed up as an excuse for yet another barely legal orgy? No. There are important philosophical and personal questions to consider here. If it just so happens that a celestial alignment traversing the God and Devil worlds might send a cascade of sexual energy into the human world, then everyone will just have to deal with it the best they can.

Won't they, Rin?

---

[Chapter 1: Friends of Friends]

"_Now for our next story. Some people live the philosophy that 'Life…is study.'" _

The smarmy infotainment jockey on the TV didn't smooth the café's clamor, but Rin had tried studying in peace and it hadn't worked. There was always a chance that you could do something wrong your entire life, so why not take a chance to mix things up. He'd amused himself with this thought as he'd left the quiet bedroom where he'd studied all his life. It sounded like something Asa would say, really, and being alone in public was just as likely to make him depressed as focused.

"_If life is study," the talking head continued, "not a cabaret, not even a parade, then are teachers under even more pressure than they themselves can comprehend?"_

Rin had selected the location for seeming off the radar of other students and hopefully the homing instincts of certain female students. Stealth means nothing to Luck, of course. He could just imagine Asa teasing him when Kareha (a friend of Asa's and a part time waitress ((fulltime uniform fetishist)) at who knew how many other places) told her, as she surely would, that Rin had "taken himself on a date." The phrase stuck after the fifth time Kareha asked why he would meet a date in such a place. Rin was determined to focus on his studies without being rude to her, but he was beginning to wish he knew her well enough to tell her off.

"_Maybe a certain professor of astronomy at the local college could shed some starlight on this question."_

Rin refocused his annoyance at the anchorman, whose enthusiasm was clearly wasted on the aging café patrons.

"So, Rin…are you really studying, or did you just need some time away from your harem?"

Kareha giggled. All the time. Always so girlishly that he could never really be annoyed, but almost always at some scandalous innuendo.

"No, Kareha. And no I don't have a harem. I have exams. I was trying to find a distracting, but not too distracting place to study because I couldn't concentrate in my room and-"

"_The professor, who for legal reasons must remain nameless, was said to be examining a star that he said actually seemed to be approaching our system. It was only after missing three of his lectures that anyone thought to check on him. He was found in the campus planetarium in a near-coma after what witnesses described as a 'days-long masturbation marathon.'"_

The anchor tried, and mostly succeeded, to hide how personally and professionally ecstatic this made him. Rin tried, and mostly failed, not to spit his coffee all over his notes. For their part, the other café patrons shifted, clinked, and even gasped like the living. As if such a story on a semi-serious news station wasn't shocking enough, Rin glanced over at Kareha to find her frozen, not with giggling glee, but with intense, almost fearful concentration.

"Mr. Manager, sir, will you please turn up the volume on the TV?"

The manager twitched and used the remote without taking his eyes off the screen.

"_As scandal is rare at this university, and as the incident involved no other students or faculty, save the colleague who called the paramedics, the dean has tried to keep the incident quiet. We at Raccoon-Balls News do not intend to disrupt the education of our country's future leaders, but recognize the importance of knowing when something so…inexplicable and, if I may, inexcusable occurs within their midst. More on this as the story develops. Next up, do oysters really have the special properties so many attest to, and-"_

"IDIOT! What constellation was he looking at?"

Kareha's merciless command stole the looks of disbelief away from the TV. Rin braced himself in the booth so desperately that a little more coffee slipped over the edge of the mug onto his notes. Kareha changed her expression just as forcefully.

"Oh my my my! Thank goodness I don't attend that college. Tee-hee!"

The patrons grumbled, chuckled and returned to themselves in unison.

Kareha put her coffee pot down on Rin's notes, wiped the sputtered coffee off the seat across from him, and sat down. She watched her hands wrestle each other for information as Rin looked for the real Kareha somewhere else in the cafe.

"It couldn't be…it's only a legend…even if-"

To Rin's young and quasi-experienced perceptions, it almost looked as if the hushed mumbles and squeaks spilling out of her were a kind of coquettish token resistance to her own thoughts.

"Kareha, what the hell was that all about?"

"Hm?" She met Rin's disbelief with a suddenly innocent and oblivious smirk.

A gut-wrenching fear he hadn't felt since he'd been simultaneously targeted by the most desirable women in two (maybe three) worlds made another appearance, this time a little bit lower in Rin's system.

"Kareha, do the Gods have something to do with that professor? Do the devils?"

"Little Rin, whatever are you talking about?"

"Do _I_ look that helpless when I try to laugh off a question," Rin asked the both of them under his breath.

"You heard the newsman. That professor was all alone."

"What I heard is you being serious about it. I've never seen you serious about anything."

Kareha gave him a sly smile, then put her hands in her lap, squeezing her shoulders and other parts closer together. "Now Rin, you haven't really seen much of me, have you?"

The fear, curiosity, and humor drained from his face. "Nevermind."

Rin had learned, probably enough for a lifetime, not to give an inch to this kind of conversation. He resumed studying with a new intensity.

"Okay, Rin, I admit this might be something…something-"

"I said 'nevermind,' Kareha. Please take the coffee pot off my notes."

She topped off his mug and put the pot back where it had been.

"It could just be a coincidence that some pervy old teacher got caught with his pants down."

It was unnerving to hear the lighthearted, if immature girl use such slang, but Rin refused, flat out refused to take the bait.

"Actually, Rin, in your situation, it might be safer if you did know." Kareha was shifting in her seat now, as if she had to use the restroom, or-

No. Rin would not take the bait.

"You see, the stars in the world of the Gods are…different."

"What do you mean 'different'? What about the world of the Devils?"

Rin closed his eyes and cursed himself for asking reasonable questions about what was sure to be a ridiculous story, especially if it were true.

"No one really knows how much the stars and planets impact people in the human world, and usually the same can be said about the others."

Rin glanced up, quickly, but a glance was all it took to see that Kareha might actually be struggling with something both very serious and overly mature.

"When I started to," Kareha let off a few steamy giggles, "you know, grow up, my mother told me about the Lemon star."

Rin told himself not to ask what the Lemon star was. He even tried not to think about anything colorful and moved the coffee pot off his notes himself. Without looking away from the divine and scandalous space just above his head, Kareha picked the pot up, topped off his mug, and put the pot down on another of his school books.

"Oh my my my! She told me it last happened ages and ages ago to her great grandmother…but- Oh my my my!"

Whenever Kareha got especially excited about something she was known throughout the school to enter a kind of magical trance where she literally glowed and sparkled. This made friends uncomfortable because they knew what it usually meant and others uncomfortable because they could guess.

"This is your last break tonight, Kareha," the manager grumbled, "and would you please try not to…do that."

Kareha made an unladylike noise somewhere in her pink face and tried to clear her throat with dignity. She closed her eyes and sat up straight.

"The Lemon star is said to exist in multiple places at once and to have such an unpredictable orbit that it's almost impossible to know when it's going to align until it's too late."

"Too late?"

Too late. Kareha caught him looking up from his notes, beamed some kind of forbidden triumph, then lowered her head. Rin could tell that she was biting her lip. Hard. He didn't care. Heaven and Hell help him, he had to not care. He tried to crank up the volume of the voice in his head reading math notes.

Rin felt the table shift as Kareha leaned closer and felt the hairs stand up on…essentially everything…at a growing change in Kareha's voice.

"Supposedly it ended a war between the Gods and cured a plague in the land of the Devils long ago. Some people even say it happens all the time but no one notices…or wants to bring it up."

He tried to imagine the historical events in his own notes, the captains and statesmen shouting at him to honor their legacy. They were reciting their achievements when smooth, graceful hands started snaking their way over their broad shoulders and-

Rin reached for his science book.

Kareha grabbed his hand in both of hers.

"Can you feel anything Rin?" Her fingers were soft and very warm over his. Her voice was amused but very sincere.

"You mean b-besides your hands?" Rin tried to strike the conversation down with a deadpan.

"If that astronomer was looking at the Lemon star with his telescope then…oh my my my!"

Kareha tightened her grip, and was about to light up again when Rin, out of reflex as much as bravery, leaned forward with his other hand and knocked on Kareha's forehead like a tax-collector at a heavy door.

"Hello-oh! Kareha? Anybody in there who cares if I fail the exam or not?"

Kareha blinked rapidly and looked around, remembering where she was. Rin sighed gruffly back at his notes.

"You can't really be thinking of homework at a time like this? The star's conjunction is supposed to…bring people closer together," Kareha actually tried to calm herself with a quick breath, "but in your case there could be real trouble."

Rin began to recite some of the periodic table out loud, then louder as Kareha continued.

"If everyone who---wants you---suddenly wanted you---ten times as much. Think about it."

Even though she was nearly whispering, and he was nearly yelling over her, she was still twice as loud in his head.

"It might not even affect the human world unless they look through that telescope, but it could just as easily drive everyone near it…everyone in the country…everyone in the human world-"

"Kareha! I told you to knock it off, or at least take your boyfriend and do it outside!"

Rin looked fearfully over at the manager and was about to assure him that he was nobody's boyfriend when Kareha caught him by the shirt and pulled his ear next to her lips.

"How many wives do you think you could satisfy in one night, Rin?"

She sounded eager for him to show her. For real. She might not be playing the popular make-Rin-uncomfortable game, but she let him go before he could ask, or plead. When he looked back at her she was considering her hands as they considered each other. Again Kareha looked very bashful but very eager for something. This time, though, her fingers moved more slowly, more gracefully, and she used her nails.

"Sometime I wish I…wonder if I…w-wish-wonder if I could blame my first-"

Rin gave her a very blank, very disbelieving (not in her, but in his situation) stare, and stated, as clearly as he could:

"Kareha, I need to study. Please let me study. I'm going to ignore you now."

He really believed he could do it this time. Mr. Rin would be a man, a hard worker. He would ignore the silly girl oozing flirt frosting all over the place and focus on his exams. She could go on about whatever naughty stuff she wanted and it would all blend into the café's background noise.

"I can't believe I'm telling you this, but I think I'm the only student I know who isn't technically a virgin."

Rin stopped redrawing an equation he almost knew by heart. He closed his eyes and took a very slow, very quiet breath through his nose. This was not the time to speak, or to listen, only to study. Life was study.

"I don't know if I'm embarrassed that I was so young…or that I liked it so much."

The lines from his favorite mechanical pencil became darker, but didn't stop.

"Oh Rin, I barely know you…what you must think of me."

Rin was thinking that she was saying what she thought she was supposed to. No. No, he was thinking about how to work this equation.

"But it was so wonderful, even if we _were_ under the influence of the Lemon star."

Somewhere, out of the brawl in Rin's brain, a voice spoke calmly and clearly, telling him to stop her. Stop her, Rin, because she will regret spilling such a personal can of beans. It was the voice of the Right Thing to Do, there was no mistaking it. There was no analyzing it either; when all the jokes and bothers were through, Rin absolutely had to be a good person.

Kareha wiggled absently out of one shoe. The stocking was slightly loose at the toes, so Rin felt that first as she moved her foot up Rin's bare calf and into his cargo shorts.

Somewhere, at one end of the brawl in Rin's brain, a door opened and the Right Thing to Do stepped out for a smoke. It would still be watching through the greasy windows, so Rin would at least, at the very least, try to keep ignoring her.

"He wasn't that much older than me, I don't think. He didn't have his own place or anything, but it couldn't have been the first time for him. He was too good at it. He's probably bent over some lucky lady's toes right now."

Kareha wiggled her own and Rin shivered.

_Wait…toes?_

Rin's thought was so incredulous that it might have defused the situation, if the situation were that kind of bomb.

"You see, Rin, my first job was in a shipping store. The manager never kept the same schedule twice, and sometimes I'd have to run the whole place by myself. There was only one other employee, but he worked different hours so we only saw each other in passing. Still, we always said hello and goodbye for just a little longer than we had to."

Kareha giggled and shimmied her foot a little bit farther up Rin's leg.

Rin switched back to history. As Kareha's story continued, he continued bending closer and closer to the book till it was all he could see.

"He was from a far away country and looked different from everyone. My God-world ears seemed almost normal compared with his short, tight hair, his dark…dark skin…his big, juicy lips…"

Rin braced himself for whatever might happen when Kareha lit up while tiptoeing him so delicately. She didn't light up, and she moved her foot away. Before Rin could be grateful, though, she wiggled her toes into the pit of his knee and made a satisfied sigh that was as inappropriate as anything she'd said so far.

"When the holiday season came around, we both had to work longer shifts and one day we were left alone in the store together. The manager left for lunch and insisted that we close the shop and take lunch at the same time. We'd both brought our own and went to eat together in the stock room."

Rin noticed that she was speaking, and breathing, more rapidly, but he didn't notice anything else, not a word of how some idiotic manager had left two hormonal teenagers alone together.

"It really wasn't very polite of me to take my shoes off while we were trying to eat, but I was breaking in new shoes and we'd both been running around all day and-"

She started breathing more heavily, then gradually seemed to be calming herself down.

"You really are ignoring me, aren't you, Rin?"

Rin told himself not to try to show her he was ignoring her. That would be stupid, stupid like these overblown obituaries. He switched chapters.

"I'm sorry, but if I don't tell someone about this I'll just explode. This guy, he looked so concerned when I complained that my feet were killing me. I pulled off my socks…I-I wasn't trying to be sexy about it or anything, really…and I took some lotion out of my purse and-and all of a sudden he was there, taking the lotion out of my hand. I was startled, but I just looked at him, and he just smiled, and he was so handsome and he just mumbled something about how you can't get the right angle doing it to yourself."

Kareha was moving her foot up his leg again, wiggling her toes. It didn't tickle. It felt really good, but that didn't matter because he almost had the history of whatever he was reading memorized for whatever reason he was memorizing it.

"He just started massaging my feet as if it were the most normal thing to do for someone you barely knew…and oh…oh MY…it felt so good I didn't say anything. After a few seconds I just laid back on the bench we'd been sitting on and…and I think I said something about how I'd give him a year to stop. He said I should take better care of such treasures. I don't know what I said, but I know he started using more force and I let out a sigh or a moan and he-he…"

Rin looked over at the notes he was copying. They looked like something from one of those machines that predict earthquakes. History was full of earthquakes. History was important.

"I think he told me that I, that my feet, they deserved special care. EXTRA special care. I couldn't believe it, but he started to use his mouth and-"

The table shook a little as Kareha gripped its edges and slid her foot so far forward that the tiny fold of stocking at the end of her toes tickled something it should not be tickling. Rin trembled. He was not thinking about history. He was listening very close to a very deep and heavy whisper.

"It felt SO good, Rin. It felt so good that I couldn't talk, so I just tried to caress his ear with my other foot. I felt it everywhere in my body. I…I wanted him to do what he was doing everywhere on my body. I pictured how we must have looked and it was beautiful. I started to hold my legs in place so that I didn't accidentally kick him or something. Then-then I started to touch myself all over and touch myself down there and I wanted him to-but I suddenly-I must have had an-"

The coffee mug, the coffee pot, and a few other condiments tipped over as Rin broke his mechanical pencil against the table. Pieces shot past his head and landed somewhere on the café floor. Rin looked at his hand and the damage around it. His coffee was cascading into the booth. The pot had only completely ruined maybe a third of his history notes. The café attendants were all watching the TV intently and mumbling to each other as they watched a police chase.

"Oh no! I'm so sorry, sir! I'll be back with a towel." Kareha jumped up, applied her already moist dish towel to the table, then hobbled quickly back into the kitchen, her other shoe still under the table.

Rin stood up, and calmly put his books in his backpack, some money next to the overturned coffee mug, and his feet out the door. Somewhere along the line he'd thought to clutch what was left of his history notes in one hand. This way they wouldn't stain his other notes. It was important to preserve his notes. He had exams to study for. Exams were important. He would have to find a different place to study. Kareha was not a good study partner. Kareha was a freaky foot-fetishist.

---

As he walked home, Rin's thoughts became more cohesive. They orbited the image of a girl on a table, skirt up, toes in the mouth of some exotic pagan masculinity icon, but at least his thoughts were cohesive thoughts. At least he could change which girl was on the table. Gradually the trade off time increased till the table stayed bare.

There was no such thing as a Lemon star. Stars didn't really affect people anyway. The girls in his life were sweet, and lovely and just a little sillier than usual, so the right thing to do was to be a good friend. No, the Right Thing to Do was to acknowledge that they believed they were in love with him and so he'd better not toy with their emotions even if they were too immature to be real.

The Right Thing to Do was to greet the two men outside his home courteously. There was no reason to let his nervousness make him rude. The kings of the God and Devil worlds had been eager to impress themselves on him for a while now. They were probably just exercising another routine in encouraging him to study with their own daughter.

"Good evening, Rin."

"May we have a word, please?"

The two kings spoke in tandem, but almost as one. It made Rin recall a science class where he learned about liquid nitrogen, and another where he learned about the earth's core.

"Good evening, your highness, uh, your highness."

Rin bowed to one king, then the other. Maybe he should have bowed extra low to the king of the Gods. It was one of his subjects he'd treated so dishonorably, after all.

"Can you spare a moment?"

The king of the Gods knew. He always seemed so carefree and encouraging, but he was terrifying now and it must be because he was going to kill Rin in some way the girls' fan clubs could only dream of.

"Of course you will-I mean-I mean of course I can."

Rin bowed again, directly between them, just in case. He thought about how vulnerable this made him. That was the point of the gesture, though, right? He hadn't done anything wrong.

The king of the Devil world stepped forward, arms crossed, eyes on Rin and everything inside him.

"Rin, tell me what you know about astronomy."

---

[Note:] More chapters coming. Rin has at least five more encounters to look forward to. Maybe six, so as to make it seven total, for luck.

You're lucky, aren't you Rin?


End file.
